‘Dunkirk’ to Get Biggest 70mm Rollout in 25 Years, (Sorry Quentin Tarantino)

Are Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino rivals? The answer is “no,” and yet that’s still how I prefer to imagine them, and what’s more, it helps make sense of a recent news item. In 2015, Tarantino mounted his Hateful Eight“70mm road show” to great fanfare (much of it self-generated), offering audiences around the country an opportunity to see his Western thriller in all its splendor and glory. It was a massive undertaking: corralling the necessary equipment, shipping it to the participating theaters, installation costs, training multiplex projectionists unfamiliar with the 70mm format, the whole deal. And in what I can only assume is a diss aimed directly at Q.T., Nolan has now announced a 70mm engagement for Dunkirk dwarfing anything attempted in recent memory.

Varietyreported that Nolan’s soon-to-come war picture will play on a whopping 125 screens equipped with 70mm projectors (which, for the uninitiated, just means that they run a larger film strip, which contains greater visual detail — think of it like the ultimate HD, except it’s not like that at all, it’s better), the widest such exhibition in 25 years. Nolan previously got 70mm Interstellar prints on a puny 50 screens, but this new Dunkirk run will make that (and The Hateful Eight’s 100 screens, and The Master’s major cities-only tour) look like small potatoes. Below, courtesy of Warner Bros., see the full list of locations where Dunkirk will be showing in 70mm beginning July 21, with tickets going on sale July 7.